Analytics + Business Intelligence: advanced reporting platform delivers SmartDashboards that focus on legal spend, firm and timekeeper performance KPIs – with data refreshed daily to ensure counsel are always on top of the key trends driving their matter portfolios

Matter Management: intuitive platform that standardizes key elements of legal matters, cases and claims so that legal teams can gain detailed insight into every moving piece of a file – from practice area and matter type to budget and all points in between

Collaboration: interactive system for scheduling case milestones, sharing documents and intelligence about legal issues common across matter types, and building resource databases for witnesses, mediators, judges and opposing counsel

“Optimizing outcomes. Assessing the effectiveness of flat fee arrangements. Applying constant vigilance and quantitative analysis to the process of selecting and retaining outside counsel. These continue to be hot topics in our category – and can be incredibly daunting and time-consuming even for the most seasoned counsel. Acuity ELM’s e-billing, matter management and analytics modules are delivered out of the box with industry best practices built-in, so teams can immediately improve efficiency and attenuate their spend – allowing them to stay focused on the heady, strategic legal analysis they were trained for,” observed Acuity ELM President Kelley Johnston.

Acuity ELM’s v4.0 release represents the culmination of rigorous research and prototyping efforts via Acuity Labs, its innovation incubator. Head of product Pamela Jowdy remarked, “through incredibly enlightening problem discovery and solution validation sessions with in-house counsel and legal operations experts across the country, it became quickly evident that first-time adopters and smaller teams face common misgivings about investing in and adopting enterprise legal management software. They universally demand a quick return on investment, a rapid implementation timeline, and the ability to start simply with basic features – with room to grow into more complex workflows as their business needs evolve. Regardless of team size or budget, in-house legal teams have zero tolerance for integration challenges and expect to be moving matters and invoices through their ELM platform within weeks of contract execution with the vendor. Because we’ve invested extra time in understanding the unique needs of these underserved legal teams, we designed Acuity v4.0 to exceed these prudent requirements. When clients are ready to implement more advanced features, our configurable technology stack allows for seamless, easy upgrades – so that small teams can recognize the same efficiencies and results as have our larger clients who leverage matter management and e-billing technology at enterprise scale.”

Johnston added, “small and mid-sized in-house legal teams operate under a unique model – fewer staff typically wear multiple hats and put forth Herculean effort to get the job done. While they have become expert task-switchers, at times senior counsel are finding themselves burdened with administrative tasks and minutia that over the course of weeks and months take a cumulative toll on productivity – and more importantly, work quality.

Pushing paper files physically around an office, struggling to find information to assemble basic reports on relative firm performance and creating new matter files from scratch mean less time protecting and growing their company and more time trapped in myopia. We’re proud to have married Acuity’s cloud-based technology with smart product design to bring an affordable matter management and e-billing platform to the legal teams that need it most.”

Jowdy concluded, “ELM software solutions have been out of reach for many legal teams because of large initial investments vis-à-vis volume of matters and invoices processed. Payback periods took years instead of months. Acuity ELM’s proprietary design and embedded efficiencies allow most of our clients to break even on their investment within three months – and recognize three-year return on investment in excess of 320%. We remain vigilantly focused on ROI as we know that smaller teams demand more and more value for every dollar they invest in legal technology. Because we’ve been providing enterprise legal management software to clients of all sizes across a wide breadth of industries for the last twenty years, we’ve baked those combined learnings and best practices into Acuity ELM v4.0. Whether you are a team of two or two hundred, v4.0 delivers the tools and analytical horsepower that allow you to operate as a true business partner.”